


This Vicious Cabaret

by Truth



Category: V for Vendetta (Comic)
Genre: Brainwashing, F/M, Genocide, Kidnapping, Murder, Racism, Terrorism, Torture, Violence, canon character death, extraneous warning tags due to canon content, facism, reference to suicide, spousal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While the dance set before you may be unfamiliar, sometimes you'll find that you know all the steps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Vicious Cabaret

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wallwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/gifts).



> The lyrics to 'This Vicious Cabaret' belong to Alan Moore and the music was penned by David J. They can be found on pages 89-93 of the Vertigo Graphic novel 'V for Vendetta'.

**“They say that there’s a broken light for every heart on Broadway,  
They say that life’s a game and then they take the board away.  
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story,  
Then leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret.”**

Rosemary Almond, enemy of the people, had been sentenced to death for high treason and executed promptly. They said so on the radio, or at least the channels still controlled by the former government. The news was broadcast frequently, a triumphant bleating of punishment and retribution, promising the same to the ‘lawless rebels’ who were ‘destroying the very fabric of Britain’s future’.

“D’you think she’s really dead?” Dominic was still dizzy sometimes, if he moved too quickly. The blow he’d taken had truly scrambled his brains, little as he wanted to admit it. In a way, it made the acceptance of everything so much easier. V had left him to play with the radio while he attempted to pull himself together. The wildly conflicting reports were actually making his head ache even more. “I – V?”

“If she’s not dead, she probably wishes she were.” The figure in the mask and wig seemed so much shorter than the titanic image he remembered seeing on the screens. The voice was the same, however, oddly distorted and almost singing from behind the mask. V’d found a place to sit in a wing chair and had been watching a set of muted video feeds. One of them had been frozen on an image of the woman in question, and V’s attention appeared to be on the picture. “She carried out an act the equal of any that might be attributed to me, and they would want to make an example of her.”

One of the other screens was showing the actual murder of the Head. The angle was bad, the film was grainy, but it was clear enough to show the stricken, empty look on Rosemary’s face. A second, equally grainy, showed her progress along the parade route over that last, fatal fifty meters. She moved mechanically, but with purpose.

Dominic stretched to peer around V, watching the images from his own seat on the floor. “Why did she do it?”

“You think it was a random act? That she had no reason for it?” V’s attention remained on the frozen image of a pretty woman of middle years with strain lines about her eyes and a smile that sat oddly on her face, as if it were a foreign expression.

Dominic hadn’t known Rosemary Almond personally, but her husband had been in charge of the Finger, so he’d seen her often enough. He remembered a charming woman who spoke little and … that was all. There’d been something wrong there, but –

“It’s not the sort of question you ask.” Dominic felt uncomfortable even as he said it.

V rose, reaching out to touch the screen with gloved fingers. “Or even one that would've been safe for her to answer, if she'd chosen to answer at all. Who would risk helping her, knowing that they would have to face her husband and his army of thugs?”

Dominic looked away, wondering if this feeling of shame and guilt was what had driven Finch to his present state. “And now she’s dead.”

“I never said that.”

 **“In no longer pretty cities there are fingers in the kitties,  
There are warrants, forms and chitties and a jackboot on the stair,  
There’s sex and death and human grime in monochrome for just one dime,  
And at least the trains all run on time, but they don’t go anywhere.”**

Revolution was never a simple thing. Born from the howls of the mob, it shifted and roared like a starving, wild beast that has just scented blood and twice as difficult to control. As London burned and the riots continued, the remnants of Norsefire withdrew from the city, moving north and attempting to regroup.

With the death of not only Susan, but the Eye and Finger, the Nose missing and the Mouth silenced, chaos reigned. The lack of leadership brought vicious infighting and more deaths, reducing the number of capable leaders and elevating the level of mindless violence exponentially. In the chaos, information was lost, resources were misplaced and the machine that had been Norsefire broke down in small and unexpected ways.

The little people, the cogs in the political machine who had no need to flee the fury of the mob also had no impetus to show up for work while the streets remained full of people looking for a target. Jordan Tower had been vandalized, but once emptied of Norsefire drones, had given birth to a new voice.

A decidedly impertinent one.

“Hullo, London. So it’s about nine, give or take. I’d like to ask the more enthusiastic looters and rioters out there if they might tone it down just a bit. Word has it the Norsefire bastards cherish a few ideas of coming back to take advantage of the disorder. Not wanting with that, let’s try to calm things down, hmm?”

The voice wasn’t anything like the soothing tones of Prospero, resonating with fruity confidence and carefully enunciated authority. It was the irreverent piping of a teenage girl, lacking erudition but making up for that lack with an arrogant confidence.

“Weather’s looking dicey, so if you’re out looting electronics, it probably won’t be worth crap once you get it out of the shops anyway. Downpour’s not good for that sort of thing – take my word for it.”

Everyone knew where the Mouth had operated from. With a voice, any voice, speaking to them clearly, the people of London began to gravitate to that one, steady beacon in the chaos.

“Got a note here says there’s a group wanting to get the electric back on, Downing Street area. Anyone qualified might find themselves with a few hot meals and maybe a bit more. Bring yourselves down there with whatever kit you’ve got tomorrow morning about seven.”

Mary Carter was seventeen and had snuck into Jordan Tower on a dare. She and two friends had made their way up into the building, past open doors and through drifts of discarded paperwork. They’d found a few locked doors, but Dave’d always been good with that kind of thing, and eventually they’d gotten themselves into the control room.

While the mobs had rampaged through the streets, looking for anyone with past authority to vent their fear and anger upon, Mary, Dave and Gin had found themselves in control of the Mouth. Dave’s uncle had worked for the Eye and Dave knew a bit about electronics as a result. The opportunity to mess about had been too much to resist, and the moment Dave figured out how to make the airways hum, Mary had reached for the nearest mike.

Three or four false-starts later, London had been treated to her voice, somewhat wavering, as she made her first announcement.

“Now that the bastards who shot my mum are on the run, what say we keep ‘em that way? We’ve got a pair of glasses here and a good view of the streets. It’s a start, but if someone could get over to the Eye, we could really get something going.”

That voice, with its somewhat unorthodox encouragement, piped out into the streets and into every home. The reaction was mixed, but most of the mob just needed someone to point the way, and Mary had made herself both a rallying point and a target.

Mary was, by no means, a stupid girl.

“If you’d want communications open and out of the hands of the murdering fucks, you might gather some pals and nip round to Jordan Tower and keep ‘em from trying to add a few more bodies to the roster. I mean, we locked the doors and put up a few barricades, but a bit of a hand would be nice. In the next ten to fifteen minutes’d be great. No pressure.”

Three days later, she had a group of adults advising her, handing her reports and letting her know what was going on. Dave had been absorbed into the small group of returning technicians and Gin had been taken down to the Eye to help put things back in order there.

Still, it was Mary’s choice what to say on the air. They handed her the weather info, the reports from the Eye, the lists of the missing and pleas for help. She went through them every hour, telling London and the nation what was going on – even the bad things – and bullying, pleading and haranguing the people within range of her voice to get off their asses and give each other a hand.

It was one hell of a contrast to the message on the airwaves seized by Norsefire in an attempt at retaining their control on information and propaganda.

“So things ain’t as neat and tidy as they used to be,” she closed the hour’s announcements, her reedy soprano somewhat hoarse. “At least nobody’s gonna shoot you for telling them to sod off. No one’s gonna rape your daughters for turning left instead of right at a stop – well, not and wave a badge as excuse, anyway. No one’s gonna tell you what you _have_ to do, or you’ll wake up one morning dead.

“I ain’t the Voice of Fate. I ain’t gonna lie and tell you that it’s all gonna come up roses. What’ll happen next is on your head – so get off your sodding behind and do something about it.

“Someone or other once said that for evil to come out on top, all it took was for good people to do nothing. It’s around nine-thirty. Stop hiding in your fucking houses, go out and make yourselves useful. Signin’ off.”

She was shaking a little every day as she flicked the little switch to turn the mike off. Not for her the little acoustic booth and the tweaks to her voice. She didn’t just read a prepared script, she saw what was going on and she told other people about it. Mary Carter didn’t rate armed guards and an expensive house, or even a paycheck. She slept on a cot in the corner of the broadcast room, always available if something needed to be said. They brought her hot meals from whatever place was brave enough to be open and, often, from someone’s mum, who wanted to make sure ‘that poor, brave girl’ got enough to eat.

She’d had more hot meals in the last week than she’d had ever before in her life.

Mary didn’t do it to be heroic, or because she felt called to it. She did it because she’d been in the right place at the right time and people needed something constant, something to cling to amidst the chaos. They needed a voice they could trust and, somehow, Mary had been in the right place at the right time and struck just the right note.

So she ate and she slept and she read the news, every hour on the hour, save for a four block stretch sometime after midnight, when they left her in peace for something longer than a half an hour nap. She didn’t think of it as a sacrifice, it was just her part in what was becoming a much larger world. She barely even thought of the workhouse anymore, and that alone was a blessed relief.

It was around two in the morning when she felt herself shaken awake, blinking blearily in the glow of the instruments that were never really shut down. A dark shadow leaned over her, a piece of paper in one hand. She reached for it automatically, rubbing her eyes as she sat up.

“… missing person? At this hour? Who the fuck is she and why’re you-“

The figure had a torch and turned it from the paper to himself, effectively silencing her. The smiling face before her was not one she’d thought she’d ever see in person, certainly not so close, and she felt her breath catch unpleasantly in her throat.

“Everyone’s important to someone,” a soft, distorted voice told her. “Spread the word, Mary Carter.” A gloved finger came up to press against plastic, smiling lips. “But never say why.”

Somewhat dazed, Mary continued to stare as the torch flicked out. By the time she pulled herself together to rise and turn on the lights, she was alone. But for the paper in one hand, it might’ve been a dream.

Fifteen minutes later, radios and speakers all across the city scratched to life with a message that was repeated at every hourly broadcast throughout the day.

“Missing, Rosemary Almond. Some of you may remember her as the woman who shot our supposedly glorious leader. She was beaten and hauled away by the Fingermen, like so many others. They tell us she’s been executed, but no one’s seen any vid or pictures and I think they’d be gloating about it just as hard as they could, not just pissing about it, so maybe she is still alive. Any road, she’s vanished and some think she might still be alive - somewhere. If you know where they took her, or what really happened, contact me, Mary Carter, at the Jordan Tower.”

All of London heard the message and, in a buried library, Dominic Stone breathed a prayer of hope for a woman he barely knew.

 **“Facing their responsibilities either on their backs or on their knees,  
There are ladies who just simply freeze and dare not turn away.  
And the widows who refuse to cry will be dressed in garter and bow-tie  
And be taught to kick their legs up high, in this vicious cabaret.”**

Rosemary Almond thought she knew what pain was.

Years of marriage to a man who grew cold and hateful, who occasionally struck her when he’d been drinking, and hurt her every day of their recent life together…. Rosemary had loved him. She’d loved him through every day and every slight and every insult, letting her hope for things to improve or to go back to the way she’d once dreamed they’d be, keep that love alive. She’d thought Derek’s derision and rejection had been Hell.

Maybe it was because they’d never had a child. Maybe it was because there was something wrong with _her_. He said it so often that it had been easier to believe it than to fight back. When he’d brought his gun to their bedroom and held it before her, pointed at her face, she’d never been so frightened, so revolted, so _terrified_.

She looked back at that memory as the moment when her old world had finally come completely apart. Derek’s death had been traumatic, yes. She’d been walking in a world of shock, grey emptiness holding any real horror at bay. Rosemary had mourned him truly, despite all that had passed between them – or thought she had.

Desperate, alone, lacking money or any job skills, she’d used her body to buy herself some time. She knew it wouldn’t last, and it didn’t. Her new protector died, killed by the same man, and she was forced to find a job where she used her body again, less carnally but no less degrading.

Everything had been grey and horrible and distant, her fear and loneliness driving her with a slow inevitability to that moment where there was only one way out.

Rosemary had no idea when the thought of death had begun to turn. She was certain that she could not go on living, could not even once more show her body to the leering crowds, knowing that there were people in the audience who came to see her humiliation as much as her body. She could not go on, could not choke on that painful, suffocating grey even one more moment.

Yet she’d been terrified when she’d tried to buy the gun, even more afraid when she actually received it. The feeling confused her. Why be afraid when you wanted to die? What could be worse than that choking greyness, filled with humiliation and misery?

She wanted to blame Derek, but couldn’t bring herself to that point. She could’ve struggled harder. She could’ve found something outside the home, despite the pressure and minor scandal it would have brought. She could’ve done so many, many things differently – She still loved him, despite everything he’d done, and perhaps that was the hardest part.

Nothing had prepared her for the afternoon where she picked up her gun and walked out the small flat that had become her home. Rosemary had walked, unable to afford any other transport with every bit of her money having been eaten by the purchase of the gun. She had walked for what seemed like miles, without a thought in her head, the picture of Derek and herself, from happier times, digging into her side. She didn’t remember sliding it into her coat, but the point of the frame dug into her ribs with every step.

The crowds grew thicker and she moved onward. She wasn’t driven by revenge or self-pity or hate as she walked. There was an ending in sight, an ending that wasn’t the pointless death of a nightclub dancer who no one would mourn or even miss. She wasn’t powerless. She wasn’t the discarded leavings of some man who had fallen out of love with her, or even the men she’d allowed to use her since that time.

She was Rosemary Almond and, if she couldn’t live, she would at least not die as a nameless someone who had wasted their life. It had been wasted, she could not deny it now, countless opportunities smothered and stripped away as the years passed.

Her death could be worth something. She could achieve something. She could strike a blow for every woman who found herself locked in a box while their husband moved freely and found other interests. She could do something for those women, sealed away and growing weaker and weaker as the years passed, held prisoner by a society that did not want or value them.

Rosemary Almond would die, but she could do something with that death.

Of course, it hadn’t been as clear as that. She hadn’t actually thought her way through any of it. She had blinked away the grey to find herself face to face with Adam Susan, their _glorious_ Leader, a man who she’d met countless times and yet somehow could not remember her name or even existence.

Everything had been so clear and vivid as she raised her gun and stared at him for a long moment, _feeling_ crashing into her for the first time in months and having no idea how to process any of it.

She watched the horror dawn on his face, saw the fear, heard the sharp, ugly noise of the gun and watched that face disintegrate.

After, there was nothing but pain.

Rosemary didn’t cry as they beat her, didn’t have any words to answer the questions screamed into her ear. There were no tears left in her, no fear and no horror. It was over. It was all over.

This was Hell.

 **“At last the 1998 show! The ballet on the burning stage!  
The documentary seen upon the fractured screen,  
The dreadful poem scrawled upon the crumpled page.”**

“Mary? ‘s David. Look girl, I’ve got someone down here as wants to pass a message on. He’s a real tough, probably ex-Finger. What? I dunno. Just said to say, ‘Nuts to you,’ and an address. Somewheres in Knightsbridge.”

 **“There’s a policeman with an honest soul that has seen whose head is on the pole  
And he grunts and fills his briar bowl with a feeling of unease.  
Then he briskly frisks the torn remains for a fingerprint or crimson stains  
And endeavours to ignore the chains that he walks in to his knees.”**

Dominic’s concussion had faded, but the blow to his head was still causing occasional vertigo and headaches. He preferred to sit on the floor, allowing him to lie down easily when dizzy spells hit. Not understanding his current situation was the least of his problems but the first of his concerns.

V came and went, leaving Dominic to himself. The former investigator had yet to find an exit from the underground rooms, and was fairly certain that there were more rooms yet to be discovered. Lingering nausea and headache kept him from exploring too far.

“I don’t understand.” It was a phrase Dominic was growing to hate. It hurt his pride deeply, but V didn’t seem inclined to part with information of any sort unless prompted by a direct question. Dominic was not going to allow his pride to keep him trapped in ignorance.

Closing the book he’d been perusing, V tipped his head to indicate attention paid. “What don’t you understand?”

“Why am I here?” Dominic had avoided asking this question for days, in part because he wasn’t certain that he would understand the answer. The rest was fear for what V might tell him.

There was a long silence, and he could feel the heavy, considering glance from behind the mask. “You feel constrained.”

“I’m underground somewhere with no exit and no explanation. Can you blame me?”

“I could return you to that alley.” The strange, distorted voice was perfectly calm, keeping the words from being an overt threat. “Is that what you want?”

The scenes he’d witnessed playing out on that wall of video screens over the past week flashed before Dominic’s eyes. He’d been lucky, insanely lucky, to have found himself in the gloved hands of V instead of run down by those hunting the remnants of Norsefire through the streets of London.

“I’m grateful. I appreciate that you rescued me, but I-“

V held up a hand. “What have you to go back to? Your name is on a list of wanted fugitives, and if you survived to be taken in, it’s almost certain that your position within the Nose would get you convicted and shot.”

Dominic flinched. These were things that he’d known, but hearing it pronounced so calmly _hurt_ something deep inside. “We were the Nose, not the Finger. We didn’t –“

“Didn’t stand by while the Finger murdered, raped and stole?” V’s voice never changed, calm and lacking accusation. “Didn’t support the Head as he oppressed, controlled and destroyed? Didn’t realize that your actions were supporting a greater evil?”

V rose to his feet, looking down at Dominic from behind that frozen smile. “I don’t believe you.”

Dominic had to look away. “We were afraid.”

“An honest answer. Are you still afraid?”

“No.” Dominic sought for words, looking down at his hands. He was no longer the clean-cut investigator, the man with the answers and the career that seemed headed ever upward. He could feel the beard he’d allowed to grow and knew the loose pants and over-sized sweater that V had provided made him look more like a derelict.

V waited, silently, for Dominic to find a response.

“I’m… guilty. We all were. Finch was the only one honest enough to see it for what it was and try, at the end, to do something about it.”

“Would you like to do something?” V moved away, giving Dominic the option to follow.

After a moment’s hesitation, Dominic did, moving with V as they entered the room with the huge bank of monitors. “What can I do?”

“That’s the wrong question.” V stopped before the moving images, white mask glowing in the reflected light. “Look.”

The images shifted and moved, showing scenes from all over London. Peaceful scenes of families, the edges of one of the still on-going riots, a group of men and women wearing the colored scarves that the new police had chosen, supervising a group of firemen as they extinguished a fire and rounded up some looters….

“It’s a new world, Dominic. They’re picking up the pieces and learning what it is to hope. Discovering that freedom is more than just another word.” The fixed expression of the mask seemed to shift with the moving images as he stared at the monitors. “They must rebuild from the ruins, start again. The question, Dominic, is not what you can do.”

That frozen smile almost seemed to widen. “It’s what _will_ you do?”

 **“While his master in the dark nearby inspects the hands with brutal eye  
that have never brushed a lover’s thigh but have squeezed a nation’s throat,  
And he hungers in his secret dreams for the harsh embrace of cruel machines.  
But his lover is not what she seems and she will not leave a note.”**

“Oh my god, it’s a charnel house.”

Mary Carter had carefully considered the message and address that David had passed on to her. It hadn’t taken a genius to realize that ‘nuts’ might mean ‘Almond’, but it could just as easily be a trap as a tip-off.

She’d given the address to Marty Pegg, the man who’d taken over what used to be called the Nose. “Maybe you’ll find the Almond woman there. Maybe you won’t. I think it should be looked into.”

Marty, a fairly phlegmatic man at heart, had looked at the address, looked at her, and sent a squad of volunteers round to Knightsbridge.

“Look at all the fucking bodies! Jesus, what the hell went on here?”

The address was that of an old church, renovated to a dozen different uses over the years. The first bodies had been found in an untidy line just inside the largest room, what had once been the church proper. Just ordinary people at the wrong place at the wrong time from the look of them.

Pushing further in found more bodies, all more than a week old and the smell was terrible.

“Hey, this lot’s gotta be Fingermen!”

There’d been a fight by the back door, a group of toughs blocking the way out and bullet holes in the flimsy wooden door. Some of them had been shot in the back.

“Jesus….”

“Someone needs to start tagging these bodies. Is the camera still back with that first group? Get it in here.”

The theory that slowly emerged was that some of the Fingermen attempting to reassert control at the beginning of the riots, had chosen the church as a base of operations. Things had gone their way at first, but the tide had turned and their pseudo-fortress had become a death trap. They’d eventually turned on each other, and that’s when things had gotten messy.

“ – someone find a doctor! There’s a live one back here!”

 **“At last the 1998 show! The situation tragedy!  
Grand Opera slick with soap! Cliff-hangers with no hope!  
The water-colour in the flooded gallery.”**

When Mary was woken a second time in the small hours, it wasn’t quite so much of a shock to see V standing over her.

“You wanna know about the Almond woman, right? D’you know how hard I had to sit on this?”

“Where is she?”

“Hidden, that’s where she is.” Mary pulled a pack of cigarettes from beneath her pillow and lit one. “I – hey!”

The cigarette was now in V’s possession and he held it between them like a tiny candle. “Smoking will ruin your voice,” he told her gently. “Among other things. You should give it up.”

The fierce defiance that would’ve met anyone else’s attempt to get between Mary and her cigarettes did not appear. She looked at the smiling mask… and let it go.

“When they brought her in, Pegg came up t’ see me, said her dabs were in the system, and it was the Almond woman. Said we should spread the news, tell everyone we found the hero of the fucking hour.” Mary shrugged her thin shoulders. “An’ I thought, ‘yeah, and make her a huge fucking target, too’. So I told him to keep it quiet till she could at least, yanno, _speak_. He didn’t like that. Said we weren’t like them, to be keeping secrets, and I said that she needed a fucking chance to be human ‘fore he made her a goddamn hero.”

“Where is she?”

Mary glowered at him. “St. George’s. She can’t talk. Not yet. They broke her jaw and part of her, yanno, _face_.”

The cigarette was crushed between gloved fingers, and he held out his hand. Reluctantly, she gave him the pack. “You want me to keep it quiet still?”

He nodded. “For a little while longer. Let her be human.”

“’S what I said.”

He nodded again – and was gone.

Mary lay back on her cot, not truly feeling the call of sleep and already missing her cigarettes. “Men. Buncha assholes.”

 **“There’s a girl who’ll push but will not shove and she’s desperate for her father’s love.  
She believes the hand beneath the glove may be the one she needs to hold.  
Though she doubts her host’s moralities she decides that she is more at ease  
In the land of doing-as-you-please, than outside in the cold.”**

She’d been more than half dead when they’d found her, left lying for days on a cold floor without food and water and suffering from numerous broken bones. She’d been lucky, the doctors told her, when she’d regained consciousness and the painkillers faded enough for understanding. Lucky, they repeated at every opportunity. The shock alone should’ve killed her.

Rosemary didn’t believe in luck. She didn’t believe in much of anything anymore.

They’d put pins in her hand and arm, done surgery after surgery on her face. Everything was a misty haze of pain and grey that just went on and on. They pumped her full of liquids and sugars, carbohydrates and proteins, trying to give back her starving body what it needed so that it might begin to heal.

Too many drugs, too much confusion in her own mind and she could’ve been in the hospital mere hours or weeks. She couldn’t tell and she just wanted it to end.

It was sometime before dawn, she realized hazily, able to see the faintest hint of real light outside the distant window. She felt… terrible. Her vision was blurred and half of her head was swathed in bandages, so she had only one eye to see with in any case. Everything ached and she knew that once her jaw and cheekbone and nose were set, she had dental surgery to look forward to.

She tried to be pleased that it was all being paid for, that it wouldn’t produce a mountain of debt that she would be crushed beneath – that she’d been offered care at all. Instead there was just the greyness and she stared at the window, uncaring as to what went on outside.

“Rosemary Almond.”

Her hearing wasn’t what it should be either, between the medication and the bandages, but that voice sounded strange even to her. She couldn’t turn her head, braced and bound as she was to prevent doing herself further damage. She couldn’t speak, either, thanks to her broken jaw.

Rosemary was almost unsurprised to see V standing at her bedside, blaming her calmness on the heavy mix of painkillers and other drugs in her system. She was probably hallucinating him. He’d killed the only two men she’d ever had in her life, much as the first had hated her and she’d hated the second. Maybe this was justice.

She didn’t believe in that anymore either.

He sat on the edge of the bed, taking one of her thin, bruised hands in his. “You did a terrible thing, Rosemary. Terrible and, perhaps, necessary.”

She blinked her one good eye at him, wondering what that meant.

“Adam Susan is dead. Norsefire has fled the city, at least overtly. Across the country, people are finally waking up to their own future.” V spoke softly, voice barely loud enough for her to hear, certainly too quiet to be heard by a passing nurse.

“They want you to be their hero, Rosemary, their shining symbol of an ordinary person rising up to strike down evil.”

Rosemary tried to move her fingers against his. She wanted him to stop. She didn’t want to hear this. She wasn’t a hero. She didn’t want to be put again in a spotlight, to be placed back into the box that had confined her for so long.

“You don’t have to be a hero, Rosemary. You just have to live. There’s more to the world than you’ve been allowed to see.” He released her hand, placing it again gently on the bed. “Rest. Heal. You’re stronger than you think you are.”

She watched, still unable to understand through the haze of medication. She heard his words, but they made no sense at all.

He stood at the foot of her bed for a long moment, just looking down at her. “You’re not alone, Rosemary. You’re not without options. You’re not helpless. “

She wanted to tell him that he was _wrong_ , so very, very wrong… but as she tried to focus on him, he vanished, leaving her to wonder if he’d ever really been there at all.

 **“But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast gets eaten by the play.  
There’s a murderer at the matinee there are dead men in the aisles.  
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through,  
And with sidelong looks await their cue – but the frozen mask just smiles.”**

Weeks passed and things started sliding toward a sort of order. There were still episodes of violence and the looting had yet to be brought under control, but the people over at the Eye were now taking images from the cameras of criminal acts and getting them printed up and spread about. Vigilante justice was suddenly a viable option and crime was beginning to slow. Of course, more cameras were being smashed, but things were becoming slowly even.

The Norsefire system was left mostly in place, leaving a structure of sorts that could be used as pieces were dismantled, discarded and occasionally rebuilt. The police were still regarded with fear and distrust, but the argument that they were not Fingermen seemed to hold up, at least somewhat. More people were added to their ranks and the new line was ‘you’re public servants – so serve’.

With Mary’s beginning before them, women were starting to pop up in unexpected places. You could see them with their colored sashes, aiding the police or the firemen. Some of them were working on rebuilding the sites that V had so spectacularly destroyed. Here and there, you’d find them speaking out or even directing a group of men.

It hadn’t been so long that people didn’t remember a time when women had done the work of a man, but it was… odd to see it happening again. People were opening their houses to each other for the first time in years, sharing the things they had with others instead of hiding behind locked doors for fear of what might lie outside.

“Norsefire rewarded snitches, made a big fuss over anyone different or not quick enough to grovel.” Mary Carter had an opinion on that, as she did on most things. “They taught us to fear each other and said ‘England will prevail’. When we can’t trust each other, we’re supposed to be strongest? It’s just another load of shit. Find your neighbors and know that they’re the ones to watch your back – and you’ll watch theirs. That’s how it used to work, innit? The more friends you got, the stronger you are.”

There were those that still supported the old government, mostly those that’d grown fat on the corruption, but there were people who still believed in the fear. ‘Who will protect us now’ they asked.

Mary had an answer for them, too. “We protect ourselves. Who else’d do it?”

Rosemary had grown familiar with Mary over the long weeks of recuperation. They didn’t want her to strain the one eye left uncovered by her bandages, so they gave her a radio to pass the time in her dimly lit hospital room. At first, she’d ignored the girl’s voice, tuning her out as white noise. She didn’t want to hear the news, didn’t want to face the world outside.

Eventually, some of Mary’s words began to sink in. By the time Rosemary could read or watch television instead of listen to the radio, she no longer wanted an alternative.

“What is this shit? Every day I get a pile of crap you lot want me to read on the air and I ask, why? This is supposed to be news, not some fucking lost and found. If I read all this, I’d be on the air at all hours, spouting about missing kittens. That ain’t what I do. I tell you what’s going on and where and sometimes even why. What you do with that ain’t my problem. I ain’t gonna tell you what to do next or what you should think about it all. The world is what it is, and what it is to me ain’t what it is to you. If you want to know what’s really going on, get out there and see for your damn self.”

It was Mary’s usual message, simply delivered with a bit more vehemence. ‘Get out there. See. Do. Find all the things that they told us we couldn’t do and do at least a few of them. Discover what it’s like to live.’

Rosemary looked up at the ceiling of her hospital room, wondering.

The world knew now that she’d survived, if not where she was, precisely. Visitors from Scotland Yard (no longer the Nose) had come and gone, asking her polite questions or delivering some of the piles of gifts that people had left for her at the Yard, once it was known she’d survived.

The gratitude felt strange and foreign. She hadn’t thought about what it would mean if she survived. She hadn’t really thought about what she was doing even as she’d pulled the trigger. People knew her name. Some of them idolized her, some of them hated her, but everyone _knew_ her.

Some part of her shrank from it, feeling again the revolted horror of being on stage in a scrap of clothing that concealed nothing, while pretending at modesty. She could feel those leering eyes on her again and she shuddered. The comforting, numbing grey feeling had left her, and she found herself not knowing what to do.

So she lay in her bed, worked puzzles with her left hand, and waited and listened.

She’d given a note to one of her visitors, finally, asking to know more about the piping voice that came from her radio. She’d been somewhat shocked to get an extremely detailed response. Mary Carter, it seemed, had not been unknown to the police before her adventures took her to the Mouth. Some sympathetic soul at the Yard had even included Mary’s daily schedule, and it was a somewhat staggering workload.

Rosemary had a month or so yet before they would allow her to leave the hospital, dental surgery to replace broken and shattered teeth. She was still eating through a straw, after all. There was little to do every day save work on regaining control of her arm and to think.

She’d need a job of some kind, something that didn’t involve selling or showing off her body. She’d need a place to stay. She’d rejected the clumsy offers to make her some sort of public figure. Noteriety was fleeting, and she’d been out of the public eye for months. There had to be something she knew how to do that she could make a living from.

Nothing occurred to her and the days passed in growing frustration.

Housekeeper? She’d never been very good at that sort of thing. Cook? Again, not one of her skills. Hostess? That brought back bad memories of Roger Dascombe, and she rejected the idea out of hand. She’d never been terribly good at any one thing, and it was a hard pill to swallow.

“Hello, Rosemary.”

With her jaw still wired shut, she couldn’t even respond, but she knew who had come to call before he rounded the edge of the curtain that hid her bed from the door. That distinctive, slightly distorted voice was impossible to mistake.

V sat again on the edge of her bed, watching her from behind that ever-smiling mask.

“Have you decided who you are?”

 **“At last the 1998 show! The torchsong no one ever sings!  
The curfew chorus line! The comedy divine!  
The bugling eyes of puppets, strangled by their strings!”**

“She wants to what?” Mary sat at the edge of her cot, blinking up at Pegg.

The Head Inspector just shrugged. “She’s got nowhere to go, no family, no job – why not?”

Mary continued to stare at him as if he were off his head. In her opinion, he was not only off it, he was several counties away from it. “I don’t need a fucking mum.”

“She doesn’t want to be your mum,” Pegg retorted, shaking his head irritably. “It’s not safe for her to be out there where the Norsefire supporters might take it into their head to finish what the Finger started. She wants a nice safe place where she can just _live_ , and she thought she might find a way to be useful at the same time.”

“But –“

“You’ve been living out of a box and sleeping on a cot for nearly six months, me girl.” He leveled a finger at her, unoffended when she smacked it away. “It ain’t healthy, not that you were ever one for healthy, and you never see the light of day. There’s enough room here for a small flat. She could keep it for you and start handling some of that paperwork you throw back in the face of any brave enough to show it.”

“I don’t want any fucking –“

“She made all this possible, in a way.” Pegg glared at her, rocking back on his heels as he stuck his thumbs through his belt. “She’s got nothing – you should know what that’s like. Give her a chance, would you?”

Mary flopped down on the cot, staring up at him. “Fine. _Fine_! But she ain’t the boss of me. She can cook and clean and whatever, but I’m in charge, right?”

 **“There’s thrills and chills and girls galore, there’s sing-songs and surprises!  
There’s something here for everyone, reserve your seat today!  
There’s mischiefs and malarkies, but no queers or yids or darkies  
Within this bastard’s carnival – “**

“It’s four o’clock and look, you bastards. Setting fire to things never solved nothing. There’s a squad forming down by the docks and consensus is arsonists get shot. Don’t care if you’re kids or adults. The fires gotta stop.”

The entire staff at Jordan Tower had been shocked to discover the difference that Rosemary’s presence made. Mary wasn’t any easier to get along with, but suddenly no one had to deal with her unless they wanted to.

Rosemary’s one real skill, honed by years of practice, was in handling difficult people. It had taken almost a month of sharing a tiny flat, converted from a set of disused offices, but Mary had slowly come to accept Rosemary’s presence in her life.

Food at regular intervals, sleep in a real bed, a space to call her own for the first time in her life…. Mary was no less caustic, but the hard edge of meanness was beginning to slowly fade.

Rosemary handled the news stories now, sorting through them for the ones that could go out to the newspapers and the ones that could go to television newsreaders, keeping only the important or immediate ones for Mary. It was Rosemary who wrote Mary’s responses to any requests for information from the Eye (the only office that still kept the old name, despite having been absorbed into Scotland Yard). It was Rosemary who wrestled regular paychecks with a startlingly high number for Mary out of the slowly forming government.

Mary found herself still slightly uneasy when Rosemary was around, a trait shared by most people at the Jordan Tower. Despite skilled surgery and the best of medical care, Rosemary’s face would never quite be the same. She looked all right, but there was something… off. She didn’t speak much, either, having apparently fallen out of the habit over the months with her jaw wired shut.

“Eight, right? You can tell the damn time yourselves by now, can’t you? Tonight there’s a notice from some group over in Luton about –“

The entire nation was listening when a Norsefire loyalist burst in on Mary’s broadcast.

“Hey! Look you-“

The sound of gunfire and a scream had heralded a change in announcers, and a moment later he told them all his plans.

“You’re all fooling yourselves! Letting a skinny teenage bitch tell you how things should be run, you’re weak! Weak and stupid. You’re letting women tell you what to do! Next you’ll be letting the fucking darkies rape them, bringing weakness to –“

The sound that came then was less easily identifiable than a gunshot and the waiting audience heard scuffling and a thud and a great deal of panicked shouting.

“Fucking hell, Rosemary! What the shit-“

Before someone sensibly cut the feed.

It was Rosemary Almond who had picked up the base for the heavy boom mike left in the back of the studio and calmly walked up behind the ranting man. Mary had been looking right at her, knowing what was coming next and unable to look away. She’d been ignored because she was just a woman, another feeble, helpless creature to be ignored….

He’d never be able to ignore anyone ever again.

“Are you alright, Mary?”

Mary had just stared up at her, a streak of blood on her skinny face, trying to match the gentle concern in the words with the body now sprawled half across her lap.

“Mary?”

“ _Shit_.”

 **” – This vicious cabaret.”**

“ – the death of two soundmen. The gunman himself was brought down by another station employee, and the rest of the studio staff are unharmed.” The newsreader’s voice droned sedately on as the image of a man with half his head bashed in flickered past for the viewers. “Security on the Tower will be reassessed and volunteers are sought to –“

Dominic switched the sound off, turning in his chair to look up at V. “Rosemary did _that_?”

“You never know what you’re capable of until the moment arrives.” V had been watching the broadcast over his shoulder. “Rosemary was never helpless.”

“But – a woman –“

“There’s nothing to say a woman can’t be as brave and strong as a man.” V almost sounded amused, though the distortions of his voice made it hard to tell. “Rosemary rescued herself from a prison of expectations and demands. They told her that she had no place within this world, so she made one for herself.”

 _She’d been unable to answer him as he sat at her feet, having no voice with which to speak. He’d given her a paper and pencil from the small table beside the bed and she’d looked at them for a long time. Eventually, she picked up the pencil._

 _‘I killed a man. I don’t regret it.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I would do it again, I think. But not for the same reasons.’_

 _V simply waited, silently, for her to gather her thoughts._

 _‘I remember when there were people in England who weren’t white - when you could sometimes see women and women holding hands together in the street. I remember when there were other languages spoken, and books that spoke of travel to China or India or Africa. There’s a whole generation now that doesn’t know anything about that, or the world outside our borders, or even if there _is_ a world out there – and I was a part of that.’_

 _“A part of it?” He wasn’t questioning her, simply trying to draw her out as she paused, tired by the exertion of directing a pencil across a page._

 _‘I was one of the silent ones – one of the ones who stood aside and thought, oh, there’s nothing I can do. I was right. The person I was then couldn’t have done anything. She didn’t know how.’_

 _“And now?”_

 _‘Now? I wanted my death to mean something. Now I need to make my life into something, and it’s so much harder.’ She hesitated, playing with the pencil. ‘I need someone to need me. I know it sounds weak, but it’s not.’ She underlined the word. ‘I don’t want people to remember me as someone who stood by. I don’t want to be remembered as a murderer. I want to be useful – to help. I want to protect.’_

 _“A noble aim. How?”_

 _Her next sentence did not answer the question._

 _‘You did not kill my husband.’_

 _There was a very, very long pause before V admitted, “No, I did not.”_

 _She couldn’t smile and didn’t try. Instead, she wrote, ‘I know there are things I can do. I will find my own way.’_

 _V took her hand in his, still with an IV in the back, but far less frail and thin. “I believe it.”_

 _Rosemary returned his grasp this time, a broken figure in a hospital bed, but no longer a figure of weakness. She still had herself, and if that person was a stranger, she would not remain so for long._

“She didn’t aim very high, did she?” Dominic asked.

V shook his head. “Do you look down on her because she is technically no more than a cross between a housekeeper and a secretary, or because she did not choose to be the figurehead they wanted her to be?”

“I’m not looking down on her,” Dominic said. “It’s just… she could’ve been more.”

“She is exactly who she wants to be, Dominic – and no one can take that from her. What more is there?”

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to take this opportunity to cheer for the hippos of #yuletide who find betas for those in need, and some of those same betas: boingboing, presentpathos and Kastaka. Your willingness to volunteer and your helpful suggestions and your dancing (this one's for you, Hippo-Jenn), are always deeply appreciated.
> 
> I would also like to note that, this being after the end of the graphic novel, it is Evey Hammond under V's mask. I made the decision to refer to her as she presented herself to others. V was, after all, a man. It was difficult to balance V against Evey, but I hope it came through.


End file.
